Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Yesterday I learned a
powerful teaching from the Reverend James Ryan –outgoing Director of the Colorado
Council of Churches.In an interfaith
Bible study he taught a group of clergy a new way to look at the prophet Micah
who writes in Chapter 6, verse 8:

It has been shown you, O mortal, what is good.And what the Eternal GOD requires of you:Only to act justly and to love mercyand to walk humbly with your God.

Powerful
words – but what do they really mean?

Acting
justly and loving mercy seem to make sense… but walking humbly?With God?

In his
teaching, Reverend Ryan posed the following question to us:Why does the text state:“Walk humbly with your God?” Why doesn’t God walk with us?
His answer is simple – yet profound.The
prophet is teaching that if God walks with us
– then it might seem that we are leading the way.

If we walk with God, however, then we have no choice but to travel on the path that
God sets before us……We are not in control. Our humility opens us up to both vulnerability
and the potential for change. We don’t know the twists and turns that we might
take – or the remarkable souls that we might encounter along the way.

It’s as
though we are partners in a Divine dance - pulled forward by the rhythm of
an unseen orchestra:God leads and we follow
- with each subtle touch, or push, or weight shift we are propelled in a
different direction - whirling and spinning for the sheer joy of the music and
the mystery of the next cadence.

Dear God,

On this day
of deliberation, as we look ahead to the tasks that await these legislators and,
indeed, every soul in this chamber, we pray that we might all consider the
direction of our Divine dance.

Help us to walk with You – to dance with You.Teach us to find
new paths that might bring us to a greater understanding of Your purpose.

In our journey
together, may we find solace, inspiration and a renewed commitment to forge
partnerships that transcend politics and party.

May each
step propel us to act with justice, to love mercy, and find humility in the
awareness of the responsibility we all share to better ourselves and our great
State of Colorado.

There are times when we look at your world and see the
delicate balance that you have bequeathed to us.

Sunlight, seed and moisture come together to feed, soothe,
heal and inspire us.

Bones, sinews, and tissue are infused with the gift of life
and understanding.

Seasons change.

Time passes.

And we who have been granted the ability to discern stand in
awe of it all.

And yet – all is not perfect in your world, O God - all is
not serene.Beneath the surface beauty that
inspires is the reality of constant struggle.

Your creatures fight to survive.

Scarce resources are claimed by the strong, the swift, and
the fortunate.Those who can take will live to see another
tomorrow.Those too weak are quickly
extinguished.

But we, who are human, claim to have conquered our savage
selves.Our laws and systems of governance
and justice are designed to help us rise above our passions. We claim to be
Your partners.And yet we still have not
found a way to govern without conflict. We create both winners and losers. In this very room, tempers have flared and
hurtful words have been spoken.As this
legislative session progresses and gathers steam; as late nights and early
mornings give way to frayed tempers and intolerance, we pray that any debate
that takes place be devoid of personal prejudice or political patronage.May the differences that divide these
representatives serve the good of all our citizens.Help them to remember that humanity is
created in the Divine image – as such, all creation is worthy of respect.

Let these leaders learn tolerance, O God – even for those
whose core beliefs are different from their own.May empathy guide their deliberation.Help them to listen to one another and see
that their task is dialogue, not diatribe.They are allies, not adversaries.May we all remember that the differences that separate us are an
essential aspect of our diversity, our humanity and our strength.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

We all know the story:Moses ascends Mt. Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments.He descends and finds, to his horror, that in his absence, the people built a Golden Calf.Smashing the tablets in anger and disgust, he once again ascends God’s holy mountain.

Upon returning, Moses gently puts the second set of the Ten Commandments into the Ark of the Covenant.

Throughout their forty years of wandering, the Israelites see that Ark and those Tablets wherever they travelled.

The rabbis of old asked a question:What happened to the original, broken set of tablets?Were they discarded?Recycled? Abandoned?

One answer is that they were placed inside the Ark next to the second pair that was whole.

Why?

So that the people could see them and realize that brokenness is as much a part of life as completeness.

Let us pray:

Dear God – help us to see and hear the brokenness around us:

·On the streets of our cities;

·In the cries of children and parents who cannot care for them;

·In our parched landscape that thirsts for moisture;

·In the overcrowded schools where students thirst for knowledge;

·In the eyes of the innocents;

·In the lies of the guilty.

But let us not stop with mere perception – lest we build another Golden Calf of apathy and callousness.We pray that our seeing and hearing might spur us to action.

May the pristine surroundings of this beautiful chamber not blind us to the incompleteness that awaits us once we leave these hallowed halls.

On this day of deliberation, may these legislators be healers – bringing wholeness to the brokenness that propelled them to serve our great state of Colorado.

May this day be a day of hope, of wholeness and of collaboration.Then we shall all be a blessing.

Teachers must be ladders -
Bridging the gap between
The seekers and the sought
The tangled and the knot
Things remembered and forgot.

With each precious rung:
Words, laughter, praise, rebuke
They raise us up to loftier vistas.

Akiva, as the story goes, was discovered and embraced.
He descended from his precarious post and joined the ranks of the initiated.
Nonetheless, every night he dreamt of stars.

We, who follow in his footsteps
Must first overcome
Our fear of heights.
-----------------------------*Rabbi Akiva was one of the greatest Jewish scholars of all time. Legend teaches that he began his studies late if life - perched on the roof of the great academies of learning- trying to glean understanding of the teaching that was happening below him. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akiva_ben_Joseph

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Here is the sermon that I delivered last Friday Night at Shabbat services about the link between Idolatry and Guns.

Parashat Yitro:Fear and Flight

Rabbi Joseph R. Black

Temple Emanuel, Denver, CO

February 1, 2013

My Dear Friends,On this Shabbat we stand
together at Mt. Sinai.

Our tradition teaches that
Sinai was a moment of absolute clarity.At Sinai there were no doubts.God’s presence was absolute.

God appeared.

God’s voice was heard.

The people SAW and HEARD.

At that moment – all was
complete – the true meaning of Shalom -
Wholeness – was brought into the world.

In Exodus 20:15, we find the
following verse:

V’chol ha-am Ro-im et ha kolot v’et ha-la-pi-dim.

And all the people “Ro-im” the thunder and
the lightning.

I didn’t translate the word Ro-im because grammatically it seems out
of place.It comes from the Hebrew root,
resh, aleph, heh which means “to
see.” But the the text is full of
contradictions;

1st of all – it is
written in the present tense – it is described, not as an historical event –
but as an Eternal Now – revelation is happening all around us – all the time.In this sense, the translation is:“And all the people are seeing the thunder
and the lightning.In this context, what
happened at Sinai was not in the past, but occurs all the time. Just as the
Israelites saw the events then – we – their descendants – still witness them
today.

Secondly – how do we See
Thunder?

Some commentators state that this
means that the awareness was so complete that it transcended physicality – the
ability to see and to hear became intertwined.There was total understanding – total acceptance.

But then… the text
continues…the people fell back and stood at at distance.“you speak to us!” They said to Moses “and we
will obey, but let not God speak to us- lest we die!”

The people were too overcome
by the experience to allow it to last longer than a brief moment.They couldn’t take it all in…

There are many midrashim on
the ten commandments – one says that this moment of supreme awareness occurred only during the 1st commandment – Anochi H’ Elohecha’ - I am Adonai Your
God – which truly is not a commandment – but a statement of fact.

Others say that the only word
that the Israelites heard was Anochi –
“I”.

Others say that all that was
heard was the first letter of the first word, “Anochi” – the letter Aleph
which, as most of you know – has no sound at all – it is the beginning of sound
- the sound of taking a breath…. Even that was too much.

Have there ever been moments
in your life when everything was absolutely clear – when you knew what you were
seeing, hearing, experiencing?When you
knew what your task was to be in life?When you were overwhelmed with joy:

·Under the
chuppah?·At a Bar/Bat
Mitzvah·A Conversion
ceremony?·A Graduation?·At the birth of a
child?

But there are other times
when our sense are overloaded – times of tragedy and fear:

·At the funeral of
a loved one?

·Perhaps on an
airplane- in the midst of turbulence

·Or on a cart as
you are being wheeled into surgery?

·Or after the
airbags deploy in your car…..

These moments of joy, of
fear, of passion…bring a clarity of purpose to our lives.Ideally, they can move us to find ways to
change our actions, our perceptions, our purpose.

Sometimes they do – and
sometimes they don’t.

Sometimes they linger with
for a long time – most of the time, they quickly disappear.

Sometimes we see things a
little bit differently – for a while =- but then slowly, almost imperceptibly,
we revert back to old patterns of behaviors and beliefs.

As a people –we experienced
this type of moment at Sinai.

As Americans – we have experienced
it as well:

·July 4 1776

·November 22. 1963
– the day that John Kennedy was shot

·10 years ago
today – when the Challenger disaster occurred –

·8 years ago when
our 1st African American president was sworn in and then four years
later, on the anniversary of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King

·And just two
months ago – on the 7th day of Chanukah – December 14th,
a deranged gunman shot his way into a Connecticut school room and massacred 20
children and 6 adults after shooting his mother and then killing himself with
high-powered automatic weapons

It has been a little over 6
weeks since the events of Sandy Hook united our nation in grief and
disbelief.For a brief moment – we all
stood together as we cried our pain and sorrow.

It has been a little over 6
months since the Aurora Tragedy.

How long did it take until
the shock and pain of these events brought us back to ‘business as usual?”

Just last week, there were
several incidents of violence involving guns and automatic weapons.They filled our headlines for a day – but
then, things went back to normal….or what we want to FEEL is normal.

I have to say, when I saw the
lead story on the news last night about how Wal Mart stores in Denver are
rationing ammunitions sales, I felt a little sick to my stomach.

When I read that permits for
concealed carrying of handguns in Colorado are at such a high demand that in
some counties, a lottery is being set up to determine who can apply on each
day…

When I read of how the Gun
Lobby is sending out urgent messages to its followers – urging them to buy as
many guns as they can – before the laws change to restrict their “Right to bear
arms….”

I am sad – and, yes, I am angry.

What kind of sick reasoning
uses the tragic deaths of innocent children to promote the purchase of weapons
designed for no other purpose than to kill as quickly and efficiently as
possible – the very weapons that were used to slaughter innocents in Aurora,
Sandy Hook, on the streets of our cities and in schools, houses of worship and
too many other places to mention?

At Sinai – we stood as one –
afraid and united by the prospect of a new Revelation.But it didn’t last.We couldn’t take it.We told Moses to intervene – we were too
frail.

Moses ascended the Mountain
and, 40 days later, we were building a Golden Calf.

The third of the 10 commandments
prohibits the practice of idolatry.

Idolatry, by definition, is
the worship of that which is not Divine.We commit idolatry when we focus our values, our attention, our passion
on items,
or even ideas that detract and deflect us from the pathway that God has
set out before us.

There is no doubt in my mind that the so-called “Gun
Culture” that the NRA and other groups promote is a nefarious and deadly form
of idolatry.

Simply put: too many men and
women in our nation worship guns. The
gun lobby claims that it is protecting our freedom – our ability to defend
ourselves against an enemy that crouches just around the corner.But the freedom that they claim to protect
comes with a price – the price of the death of innocents so that some can feel
powerful with their hands wrapped around a trigger.

Now I know that guns are not
responsible for all evil.

I know that there are many
people – perhaps even here tonight – who own guns and are responsible, law
abiding citizens.

I know that access to mental
health care and treatment is an important goal that we must pursue – one that
we, a congregation are actively engaged in bringing to the attention of our
community and its leadership.

[I
want to encourage everyone here tonight to attend our community forum on mental
health sponsored by our HESED community organizing effort that will take place
on March 3rd at 5:00 PM]

But when fear and
intimidation are the tools that are used to protect the freedom to possess
machines that are designed to kill; and when the deaths of innocent children
are used as a tool to promote the sale of guns, I believe we have strayed too
far from the purpose of our freedom in the first place.

At Sinai we all stood
together – if only for a moment.

We heard God’s voice and
understood that with freedom comes responsibility and responsibility comes with purpose
and that our purpose is to be a holypeople – created in the image of God.

We cannot allow our society
to succumb to the Golden Calf of fear.

We need to remember the
moments when we were united – in our anger and our grief…in our pride and our
passion…in our hope and our hunger for justice, peace and a vision of a better
world without violence.

We need to go back to that
moment – when we are hearing and seeing and feeling God’s presence.